


this black sun revolved around you

by jaekyu



Category: Monsta X (Band)
Genre: ...vaguely, Alternate Universe - Space, Apocalypse, Complicated Relationships, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-10
Updated: 2016-08-10
Packaged: 2018-08-08 00:02:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7735039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaekyu/pseuds/jaekyu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The sun is dying. They built a whole spaceship around a bomb and gave it to Hyunwoo and gave him a crew and said: you’re our last chance, if you don’t make it it all ends.</p><p>(What they don't want you to know is this: everything ends).</p>
            </blockquote>





	this black sun revolved around you

**Author's Note:**

> i guess i write for this fandom now my dudes
> 
> this is a space au that specifically draws it's inspiration from the universe of the movie [Sunshine](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZ2-xR54UDU) which I highly recommend to y'all, it's one of my fave movies ever and definitely my favourite movie about SPACE. this fic doesn't spoil any of it, just borrows the bare bones of the plot. i stole the name of the spaceship from that movie too.
> 
> and this one is for shelby, my partner in showki crime ❤️

I go on thinking about the moon-lit past, how if you go back far enough you can imagine the breathtaking hugeness of the moon, prehistoric solar eclipses when the moon covered the sun so completely there was no corona, only a darkness we had no word for.

(DORIANNE LAUX)

 

 

 

 

 

One of the first things they teach you while preparing you for long-term space travel is this: do not watch the Earth disappear behind you.

There’s a scientific name for it. After all those astronauts that went up and came back down, as all things are want to do, they put it in books and manuals and taught it. Hyunwoo’s professor explains it to them as the overview effect.

“It shifts your whole view of your life, the way you see the world,” he says, “a switch goes off in your brain and it makes you realize.”

They don’t want you starting out a two year trip to the Sun by flipping that switch. They don’t want you look at Earth from it’s orbit and realize that below you is every single human life that has ever been lived. They don’t want you to look and realize we’re floating in a void and anything could knock us off our axis. They don’t want you to look and realize how fragile your entire existence up to this point has been.

They want to tell you space travel is what’s scary. Everything in space is just waiting to kill you. But that’s the funny thing, isn’t it? That Earth is just there, stuck in space, and it’s just a lucky set of circumstances that has kept space from killing you in your own home.

 

 

 

Space is an infinite darkness. An emptiness that you will never find the end of. It should make you lonely.

Hyunwoo does not feel lonely. He lives with his life bleeding into six other people’s lives, in shared space with shared air. He can’t even remember the last time he was ever alone long enough to feel it.

 

 

 

The sun is dying.

For years all of the research told them the sun would die in a blaze of glory and take us with it in a sea of flames that would stretch and swallow up everything we knew and some things we didn’t. They told us this.

They, as in: the scientists and the researchers and the lab techs who map the skies and perfected space travel and took photos of the surface of Mars. Those people were wrong. They don’t like being wrong.

The sun is not dying in a way that feels climatic. It’s snuffing itself out over time, like a candle with a shortening wick or a lightbulb that’s begun to dim.

When Hyunwoo was barely five years old the fading light plunged Earth into an endless winter. They wanted you to worry about the polar ice caps melting and a five years ago it snowed in Australia.

Those people who map the sky and track the rising of waters and the cracks in the ice were wrong.

They don’t like being wrong.

And so they’ve sent them, humanity's last hope, they’ve sent them millions of miles away to try and restart a star. Seven astronauts and one stellar bomb, the big bang on a smaller scale. They built a whole spaceship around a bomb and gave it to Hyunwoo and gave him a crew and said: you’re our last chance, if you don’t make it it all ends.

 

 

 

(“Everything ends,” Kihyun says, “on a long enough timeline nothing survives. Not even stars.”)

 

 

 

Their ship is called the Icarus.

“That’s bleak,” Hyungwon mumbles, the day they christen the ship with it’s name, all ready for it’s voyage into the great beyond. In another universe, in another time, they would have been explorers. This is not that universe nor is it that time. They’re just scientists and astronauts, throwing a bomb into the sun.

“What do you mean?” Changkyun asks. Changkyun is their Navigator, a lifetime spent studying maps no one has ever followed for directions, and Changkyun has never seen a day of summer in his life. Hyunwoo forgets, sometimes, that there are people who haven’t.

“Icarus,” Hoseok explains, “is from Greek mythology. He had wings made of wax, flew too close to the sun and his wings, well,”

“They melted,” Kihyun deadpans.

 

 

 

They leave on a cold day in July.

Hyunwoo does not watch Earth disappear behind him.

 

 

 

Hoseok is their pilot. He sits in the chair in front of the control panel and watches it, soft features made softer by the blue light that blinks back up at him. Hoseok sits there eight hours a day doing tests and performing inspections and making sure they don’t accidentally collide with Mercury if they get caught in it’s orbit.

Hyunwoo sits beside him sometimes. They talk.

“What did you study,” Hyunwoo asks one day and Hoseok says, “mathematics.” and then says, “what about you,” and Hyunwoo tells him, “chemistry.”

Another day, Hyunwoo asks Hoseok, “do you remember what it was like before the solar winter?”

They have two people on the ship who have never seen a summer, a real summer, but Hoseok is the same age as Hyunwoo. Hyunwoo remembers bits and pieces of life without the cold: going pink from sunlight, pulling flowers out of the ground to give to his mother.

“I remember swimming in a lake, once,” Hoseok says and he sounds sad, “I feel like I should remember more. Like I owe that to all the people who grew up without it. But I don’t. I just remember the lake.”

Hyunwoo sometimes wonders what’s worse: to never know of every summer you missed, or to remember and feel the absence of summer all around you.

 

 

 

On board the Icarus is an observation room meant for watching the sun. Up close like this, you can pretend it’s not dying in the way that it’s obvious to tell when you stare at the sky on Earth. The sun is still so bright and so large this close up.

Close up enough to burn you into dust if not for layers of perfected, automated glass, that keeps the rays at bay. Hyunwoo stands behind the shade of the glass and watches the sun.

“Gaze long into an abyss,” a voice says from behind him. It’s Kihyun, quietly entering the observation room.

“And the abyss will gaze back into you,” Hyunwoo finishes. The sun seems to burn brighter, warmer, as a reminder. Kihyun moves to stand beside Hyunwoo. Out of the corner of the light, Hyunwoo watches sunlight cast shapes onto Kihyun’s face and wonders if he’d find the same shapes on Kihyun’s face if they were on Earth.

Kihyun hums, “I don’t think abysses are usually this bright,”

“An abyss is just an expanse of the same thing that seems to go on forever,” From this close, the sun could be an abyss.

Kihyun shrugs, “I never liked Nietzsche much anyway,”

 

 

 

(“Icarus,” Hyunwoo says to an empty observation room.

“Yes, Captain?” A soft, calm female voice replies from all around him. The Icarus sometimes doesn’t sound like a computer. Sometimes. Hyunwoo always manage to catch the robotic edge to that soft voice.

“At what percentage am I viewing the sun right now?” He asks.

“You are viewing the sun at two percent of its full capacity, Captain,”

“Two percent,” Hyunwoo mumbles under his breath. “Icarus,” he speaks up again, “can I view the sun at three percent?”

“Viewing the sun at three percent would cause irreversible damage to your retinas, Captain,”)

 

 

 

Before they left on that day in July, they were told they were allowed to bring whatever personal effects they wanted with them given the circumstances that it did not: a) breathe or b) require sustenance to survive.

Hyunwoo doesn’t bring much. A non-regulation sweater, soft and thinning from years of wear, and photograph of his sister and her kids. A reminder of why he locked himself away in outer space with strangers. So that their sun could be bright again.

Hoseok brings a chessboard and leaves it in the mess hall. Minhyuk brings a collection of old CD’s he plays in the oxygen garden while he works.

Kihyun brings stacks and stacks of books that end up disorganized on shelves around his personal quarters. Some of them are physics books, to keep his mind sharp. Four years away from your research can hurt your reputation, whether you restarted the sun or not.

Some others are fiction, books of poetry, biographies and autobiographies. Books upon books upon books. Hyunwoo has seen him in every corner of the ship, spine cracked on a new one and head bent into it.

“I’m not important until we get there,” Kihyun tells Hyunwoo, told him when Hyunwoo asked how Kihyun had blown through three books in the space of a week on Earth time. “A lot of people have written a lot of books over the years, Hyunwoo, and all I have up here is time.”

 

 

 

(When Hyunwoo meets Kihyun for the first time the first thing he notices is his frame: thin, small and delicate-looking.

“They cleared you for space travel?” Hyunwoo asks. He doesn’t mean it as an insult, or as a questioning of Kihyun’s abilities. It’s just a question - but it must be a sore spot for Kihyun who narrows his eyes.

“I designed the bomb we’re going to throw into the sun,” Kihyun replies sharply, “so, yeah, they cleared me for space travel.” )

 

 

 

When they first took off, before they had even passed Venus, they were all much more - excited is the word, maybe. They would exchange friendly chatter and would eat more meals together, they all looked more awake and taking in everything around them.

They would sit on the seats in observation room and watch moons and asteroids and forgotten satellites pass.

“We’re all stardust,” Someone had said during those days, Hyunwoo doesn’t remember who. Maybe Jooheon with the wide-eyed look he would always give the stars and planets, used to living with bolts and wires and metal. Maybe it was Changkyun, whose inexperience with space in anything but star maps made him quick to wonderment.

“Ashes to ashes,” someone else had said and maybe this time it had been Kihyun, “stardust to stardust.”

Excitement doesn’t last. Especially not when you're on the first half of your four year trip to the Sun and back around. They all settle into a routine. They talk less. They all look tired.

The ship gets hotter and hotter the closer they move to the sun. Hyunwoo hangs his worn sweater into the closet of his personal quarters. He’ll find it again on the way home.

 

 

 

Icarus operates on Earth time. Outer space is always dark, safe for the stars, but the Icarus keeps its crew on Earth time. Time doesn’t matter out here, all they have is time, it doesn’t matter, but the Icarus keeps its crew on Earth time.

Routine aboard the Icarus is as follows:

First: wake when Icarus tells you to. Trust that it knows exactly what time you need to be up to perform your duties.

Second: perform your assigned duties in a timely fashion.

(If you are Jooheon insure the vacuum of space is not about to kill your crew. Make sure your mainframe computer is in it’s coolant, running at the appropriate temperature and speed. Make sure nothing is about to break. Make sure if something did break it would get fixed.)

(If you are Changkyun check and re-check your calculations you’ve checked and re-checked every day. Make sure nothing has changed. Make sure a planet or moon is not about to pull you into it’s orbit and send you crashing into it.)

(If you are Minhyuk tend to your plants. Measure the oxygen levels they are producing. Water them, plant seeds. Hum to old CD’s you remember from when you are younger.)

(If you are Hyungwon, you monitor your crew. You check on anyone who has reported an injury. You check on anyone who has shown instability. You read your books on what effects prolonged space travel have on the spine.)

(If you are Hoseok take your spot at the controls. Make sure the autopilot is still working. Make sure the calculations Changkyun gave you are properly inputted into the autopilot. Sit for eight hours, waiting for something to go wrong that will force you to take control.)

(If you are Hyunwoo you flit around the Icarus. Make sure your crew are performing their duties.)

(If you are Kihyun you choose a book. You try not to run all of the variables that would cause the bomb you designed to not reignite life on Earth, but rather plunge it into eternal darkness.)

Third: when your duties are complete, report for your mandatory meal with the rest of the crew.

Fourth: Rinse.

Fifth: Repeat.

 

 

 

Showering aboard the Icarus is never relaxing. The water is never hot enough, the water pressure is never hard enough. Seconds tick by on a timer of how many moments you can spend trying to lose yourself under the spray.

It’s never long enough. Not to feel clean or refreshed or pleasantly warm and sated. Showers aboard the Icarus leave you wet, limp and tired.

Hyunwoo feels warm now, though. Kihyun is here, too, pressed against the glass of the shower because Hyunwoo has him pinned there. Kihyun is warm too. Or maybe neither of them are warm, maybe it’s the two of them together that’s warm. Maybe they are barely lukewarm but coming together they make something that burns.

They’ve been doing this, shared beds and showers and time, they’ve been doing that since the six month mark. They came together before there was a set routine. Now they are each other’s set routine.

Kihyun comes with his mouth open against the glass door of the shower, breathing fog onto it and trying to hold back cries. Hyunwoo bites his shoulder, the timer beeps, and the shower turns off.

 

 

 

Interpersonal relationships are not against any rules on the Icarus. But they are, “discouraged,” is the word Hyungwon uses.

Hyunwoo sits opposite him in the small office he has on the Icarus, which is white and bright compared to the blue-hued darkness of the rest of the ship. “It’s discouraged. For obvious reasons.”

The obvious reasons are that they are on a mission to save everything they’ve ever known and each and everyone of them is vital to that. Kihyun maybe most of all.

“It’s not even the relationship itself that’s bad,” Hyungwon says, “in fact, I’d say it’s good. It gives you some semblance of a normal life, which is a feeling you can lose up here. But it’s not worth - it _never_ worth the fallout that can come with it.”

“It’s not that serious,” Hyunwoo replies.

Hyungwon holds a hand up to quiet Hyunwoo. “It doesn’t matter, I don’t need excuses. Like I said, it’s not against any rules so I can’t stop you. And even if it was, you’re the Captain,” Hyungwon shrugs, “I’m just your Doctor.”

 

 

 

The seven of them always eat at least one meal a day together. It’s a suggestion from Hyungwon.

(“It’s easy to keep to yourself here if you aren’t forced to interact with people,” is how he explains it to Hyunwoo, “and if you keep to yourself you get inside your own head. And then you go crazy. And my job is to make sure none of you go crazy.” )

Minhyuk cooks for them. He insists it’s a different dish every night but the food always looks the same: a grey sludge, thick and lumpy and tasteless, save for mild undertones. It mostly tastes the same too.

“Dinner’s served,” Minhyuk tells them, dropping the same grey sludge onto the round table they crowd around. He portions it out accordingly, no leftovers. Not here, where every meal has been meticulously planned to be just enough for them for exactly four years.

“What’s this supposed to be,” Jooheon looks it with a nose wrinkled in disgust.

“A thanksgiving turkey,” Minhyuk says sarcastically, digging his spoon into a generous helping of his food and scooping it into his mouth.

Jooheon stirs it with his own spoon. “Can’t you grow some potatoes in that garden of yours?”

“It’s an oxygen garden,” Minhyuk replies, “that’s not how it works.”

“This slop,” Hyungwon interjects, dropping his spoon empathetically into his bowl, “is made to give you each and every vitamin you need in the exactly right amount. Eating anything else would throw that off. No one needs the extra starch, Jooheon,”

Hyunwoo sits next to Kihyun. Their thighs pressed together and the occasional brush of their bare arms. Kihyun never talks much during meals. He watches, quietly. It must be the scientist in him.

 

 

 

“Are you scared?” Kihyun asks, always blunt. Always unpacking words and setting them down with a thunk, with no regard for if they fit or not. Hyunwoo is laying next to him in the bed in his own quarters. Kihyun’s is much smaller, so for the most part they stay here.

“Scared of what?” Hyunwoo replies. Kihyun’s hair is falling into his eyes, Hyunwoo brushes it away with a few fingers.

“It’s the dark, deadly vacuum of space. Pick something,” Kihyun rolls his eyes and Hyunwoo doesn’t really expect him to continue. He does. “What I meant was, are you scared of - of this not working, of us taking a bomb all this way only for it to be a dud.”

“I’m not scared,” Hyunwoo says, voice quiet in a serious way. He wants Kihyun to hear what he’s not saying. Wants Kihyun to here, hidden beneath the wrong words, _I have faith in you_.

“I’m scared,” Kihyun admits. It’s the most vulnerable Hyunwoo has ever seen him.

 

 

 

They pass Mercury and with the clearing of it’s orbit comes the last moments of their communication with Earth. Some of them send last minute messages home. Some of them don’t.

(Hyunwoo sends one to his sister and his niece and nephew. He’s not sure what to say, so he keeps it brief.

“It takes eight minutes for light from the sun to reach Earth,” he says, “remember that.”

He reminds them he’ll be able to resume regular communication with them in two months and tells them goodbye.)

They sit, the seven of them in the observation room to watch Mercury creep by. They did the same with Venus. The room was much more charged back then, maybe they were still clutching to the excitement they had felt back when they first left Earth. Back before carrying the lives of everyone on Earth on their shoulders made them tired.

“Hey, Jooheon,” Changkyun says, elbowing Jooheon in the ribs, “we’re only stardust, right?”

It was Jooheon who said it after all. Minhyuk and Changkyun laugh. Jooheon turns red, embarrassed.

Slowly, the crew files out. Hoseok retreats first, mumbling something about getting back to the controls. Minhyuk goes back to his plants. Jooheon, Changkyun and Hyungwon decide to have their lunch.

Eventually, Hyunwoo and Kihyun find each other alone on the observation deck.

“Maybe we’re just meant to die,” Kihyun says quietly, Mercury almost out of view.

Hyunwoo doesn’t think Kihyun ever means to be as bleak as he is. Kihyun is a physicist, a lifetime and a career built on examining variables and coming to logical conclusions. Hopefulness is hardly ever logical.

“We’ve existed on Earth all these years,” Kihyun continues, “It’s been awhile and everything ends, you know? On a long enough timeline nothing survives. Not even stars.”

 

 

 

(Not with a bang, Hyunwoo thinks, watching day by day as they inch closer to a dying sun. Not with a bang, but with a whimper.)

 

 

 

Hoseok and Kihyun play chess. Hyunwoo watches.

Just before Mercury, Kihyun sat curled in one of the seats in the mess hall watching Hoseok and Hyunwoo play chess. After Hoseok had won, he had asked, “will you teach me play chess?”

Hoseok had agreed and so now Hyunwoo and Kihyun’s positions are switched.

Hoseok overtakes one of Kihyun’s pawns. “How come you never learnt to play chess? You seem like the type,”

Kihyun snorts and advances his Rook on Hosoek’s Queen. “I already got picked on for being a science nerd,” Kihyun explains, wincing as a Knight of Hoseok’s he didn’t notice overtakes his Rook, “I didn’t need to add fuel to the fire by being on the chess club.”

“I used to play with my Dad,” Hoseok replies, “he taught me when I was a kid. He died while I was training to come up here.”

Kihyun’s hand falters moving one of his pawns. “I’m sorry,” he says.

“It’s okay,” Hoseok shrugs. He doesn’t look up from the chessboard. It’s populated by mostly white pieces, which are Hoseok’s pieces. Chess is a game that can change in an instant, usually, but Hyunwoo thinks it’s a safe bet that Hoseok will beat Kihyun. “This was his chessboard, the one we played on when I was younger. My mom sent it to me after he died. I didn’t - I didn’t touch it after I got it. Not even once. And then for some reason I just . . . I brought it with me. I don’t know why.”

 

 

 

Life aboard the Icarus is dulled. An existence with the volume turned down, colours muted like the greys and blues that surround them on control panels and computers and radars.

Hyunwoo looks at Kihyun sometimes and catches splotches of colours in his edges. The brightest colours he’s seen. Brighter than the sun.

 

 

 

A rare night in Kihyun’s room has Hyunwoo thumbing the spines of the books on his shelves. “How many have you read?” Hyunwoo asks him, throwing a glance over his shoulder.

Kihyun lays in his bed, hair messed and naked besides their regulation grey-coloured bed sheets. He’s watching Hyunwoo. Kihyun is good at just watching.

“Most of them,” Kihyun replies, shifting a little to lie on his side instead of his back. “I’m saving the rest for the trip home.”

They are silent for a few moments. Hyunwoo runs his fingers over the lettering of a book called _One Hundred Years of Solitude_ , says, “things will be so different when we get home.”

It’s true. Four years away will be a long time. When Hyunwoo left his nephew only spoke in gurgles and shrieks and when he gets home he’ll be forming whole sentences, he’ll be going to school.

If they succeed when they get home the solar winter will be over. The sun will have melted the snow as it was always meant too. Hyunwoo and the rest of them will have wardrobes full of nothing but winter clothes in the middle of summer.

If they don’t - Hyunwoo tries not to think about if they don’t. He just knows things will equally as different.

Lost in thought, Hyunwoo does not hear Kihyun shift out from under the sheets and pad across the room to him barefoot. He doesn’t realize Kihyun is near until Kihyun is leaning against his bare back, ear pressed against his spine.

“We’ll be alright either way,” Kihyun mumbles, reassuring in the quietest of ways.

 

 

 

(A year and a handful of months ago, Kihyun had kissed Hyunwoo for the first time. And that - that was surprising. Not that they had kissed, because something had been brewing between them for awhile, but that Kihyun had been the one to do it.

It had been in the dim corridor that lead to all their personal quarters. The lights magnified the veins in Kihyun’s wrists and the dark circles under his eyes. He had asked Hyunwoo, “do you ever feel lonely up here?” and before Hyunwoo could answer Kihyun was already kissing him.

His hands had been soft where they clutched against Hyunwoo’s shoulders. Hyunwoo circled an arm around Kihyun’s waist, pulled him closer, and was reminded of what he thought of Kihyun when they first met.

Thin, small and delicate.)

 

 

 

“What would it have been like if we all met on Earth?” Changkyun asks, mess hall table full for another mandatory communal meal.

“We wouldn’t have met,” Hyungwon rationalizes, and he’s right. They’re all from different fields of science and this is the only situation in which all those lines of work meetup. Maybe some of them would have met outside of the Icarus, back on their freezing planet, but fate would have never brought all seven of them together otherwise.

Hyunwoo entertains an alternate future with real summers on an Earth that isn’t running low on resources. Hyunwoo entertains a future where he isn’t the Captain of the Icarus, just a student working towards a PhD.

In this future Hyunwoo imagines he and Kihyun meet in a coffee shop because maybe Kihyun is working towards his PhD too. Maybe they go to the same University. Maybe Hyunwoo grabs for Kihyun’s coffee without realizing it. Maybe that’s how Kihyun and Hyunwoo meet in his alternate future.

It doesn’t matter. This is not that alternate future. In this future Kihyun and Hyunwoo meet because they are trying to save the world.

 

 

 

Hyunwoo never planned to be an astronaut. He never looked up at the stars and felt a tug towards them or looked at the moon and felt the light of it tug at his heart. Some of the crew are like that. Changkyun and Jooheon are the first two that come to mind.

Hyunwoo was never like that.

Project Icarus. That’s what they called it, before the ship was built and the crew assembled. Before they had any idea what they were going to do so save the Earth. Before all of that but just after they started rationing wood and gas and coal and anything to start fires, they called it Project Icarus. And it was looking for volunteers.

Hyunwoo may have never seen himself as an astronaut but he would always consider himself a protector.

 

 

 

“How are you feeling?” Hyungwon asks, legs crossed and balancing a pad of paper on his knees. He clicks his pen a few times.

“I’m okay,” Hyunwoo folds his hands together, tries not to wring them. “A little worried about some things.”

Hyungwon hums. “Talk to me about it?”

“I’m just -” Hyunwoo trips over the words, like his throat closes around them. He coughs and tries again. “We’re going to reach the Sun in a month and then - and then we go home.”

“You’re worried about going home?” Hyungwon asks. He’s scribbling notes now. Later, he’ll put them in a file. When they return to Earth, he’ll hand them off to other Doctors and if, one day, Hyunwoo mental state crumbles they’ll know it may have started here. In space, surrounded by nothing but blackness for miles.

“That seems stupid, doesn’t it?” Hyunwoo scoffs. His gaze drops to the floor of Hyungwon’s office. Even the floor here is white. It’s probably something to do with psychology, Hyunwoo doesn’t know. He’s not the ship’s doctor. “In a month we’ll either save the world or doom it and I’m worried about what happens when that’s all over and done with and we’re back home.”

“It’s not stupid,” Hyungwon retorts. “You know exactly what’s going to happen when we reach the Sun in a month, at least to some degree. You don’t know what’s going to happen when we get back to Earth.”

Hyunwoo’s mind drifts to Kihyun. He shakes his head. Hyungwon is still talking. Hyunwoo tries to pay attention but his own thoughts keep him preoccupied. He focuses and manages to make things out, but it still sounds like Hyungwon is trying to speak to him through a wall.

“No matter how different the Earth is when we get, Hyunwoo,” Hyungwon says, “you’ll be the same.”

 

 

 

The Icarus dims the lights in the personal quarters and all the hallways at around ten at night Earth time. Kihyun looks beautiful in the low light. It softens the sharp features of his face.

He’s lying under Hyunwoo right now, legs and arms framed by him. Hyunwoo’s shadow casts itself blurred at the edges across Kihyun’s body, which is flushed pink and warm. Hyunwoo kisses the curve of his jaw just to make Kihyun melt and soften even more.

Time in an odd concept in space. It almost feels like it’s not real, or that it moves differently. How else can you explain how young this thing with Kihyun feels to Hyunwoo when they’ve been letting it happen for a year and a half now.

Hyunwoo wonders if it will feel this new once they are back near Earth. Then he wonders if this will even last that long. Then he pushes those thoughts away and focuses on Kihyun.

Hyunwoo gently coaxes Kihyun’s legs apart with a hand on his thigh, fingers dangerously close to Kihyun’s half-hard cock. He opens Kihyun up slowly after that, one hand on the sharp bone of his hip while the other works fingers inside of him. Kihyun doesn’t speak much - but he doesn’t watch either. He screws his eyes shut and breathes slow. Hyunwoo feels proud he can make Kihyun forget the innate observer inside of him.

Hyunwoo abandons his plan of fucking into Kihyun at the last minute. Instead, he slinks down below the blankets, keeps his three fingers inside of Kihyun and takes his cock into his mouth too. Kihyun gasps and clutches those scratchy, regulation, ugly grey sheets.

Hyunwoo sucks Kihyun off and pushes at those buttons inside of him until he comes, his voice cracking around a desperate plea of Hyunwoo’s name.

Hyunwoo kisses spots along the cradle of Kihyun’s hips and thinks again of how small and thin Kihyun is. How he looks delicate but Hyunwoo has come to know he is not actually in the slightest.

Hyunwoo thinks of all these things and thinks of how beautiful Kihyun is that way.

 

 

 

Hyunwoo entertains the idea of being in love with Kihyun.

He thinks he could be.

But this is space, this is miles away from Earth. This is miles away from anyone else Hyunwoo could love instead. This is different. Maybe on Earth, with real gravity and with so many people he hasn’t met yet, Hyunwoo does not love Kihyun. But Hyungwon said that Hyunwoo would be the same once they got back to Earth. Which means he does.

 

 

 

The sun blazes hot and bright through the window of the observation room. It’s hard to stay in here for long periods of time now, this close to the sun.

Hyunwoo watches the way the sunlight looks against his skin.

 

 

 

Hyunwoo wonders if when they get back to Earth if he will still mean something to Kihyun.

Hyunwoo tries not to think about it too much. He can shelve these feelings for now, like that worn sweater in the closet in his quarters, and pick them back up again later. There’s a little under a month until they reach the sun and once the payload is delivered it’s another two years until they’ll be home.

If there’s anything they have plenty of, it’s time.

 

 

 

(On a long enough timeline nothing survives. Not you. Not your parents. Not your children.

Not even stars.)

**Author's Note:**

> let it be known that i know that a lot of the science in this fic doesn't work irl. it doesn't work irl in the movie either.
> 
> [tumbls](http://twoyoons.tumblr.com/) / [twitter](https://twitter.com/bodyachings)


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